A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the city from enforcing its 27-year-old sign code, ruling the regulations could violate free speech protections in the First Amendment.

The ruling results from a recent challenge to the city's aggressive plan to crack down on non-permitted billboards bordering Houston, but the scope of U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon's opinion surprised city officials.

Fearing they will lose the ability to regulate all signs citywide, not just billboards they have targeted in a five-mile ring around Houston, officials said they are considering an appeal.

"I'm disappointed," Mayor Bill White said. "I hope the court did not intend to even prevent enforcement of the sign code within the city limits."

The city could ask Harmon to reconsider her ruling, or ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to narrow the injunction so it only applies to the targeted billboards in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, a five-mile ring around the city's borders.

Houston-based billboard company RTM Media sued the city after officials threatened to issue citations under the sign code to dozens of advertisers using the company's billboards in the targeted area.

The city has cited an RTM executive more than 2,000 times, even winning an appeal of a Municipal Court conviction. The city also has a pending lawsuit against RTM in state court that seeks to prevent the company from operating billboards without permits.

But the billboards remain. So, the city decided recently to target the company's advertisers, hoping to shrink its customer base.

Harmon said that strategy infringed on the advertisers' free speech rights.

"The city's justification that such pressure tactics against advertisers are acceptable because they 'work' does not cure the constitutional problem here," Harmon's opinion states.

The judge's opinion addresses only the request for a temporary injunction, but taking that step requires her to find that RTM Media had a "substantial likelihood of success" should its challenge proceed.

Who has authority?

The White administration contends that the signs in the city's ETJ are illegal under state and municipal laws, which grant Houston the right to regulate billboards.

In court filings and a two-hour hearing last week, however, the company argued that the city does not have the authority to cite its customers. More broadly, it argued that the sign code violates the First Amendment because it distinguishes between commercial and non-commercial speech.

The city code, which covers most signs, prohibits new billboards in Houston or the outer ring. But it allows those with political, religious or other noncommercial messages.

The court took issue with that distinction, citing a 14-year-old Ohio case involving the regulation of news racks, stating that the city cannot treat billboards differently based on their content.

"Noncommercial billboards are visual blights, traffic dangers and undesirable for property values for the same reason as commercial billboards," the opinion states.

RTM's attorney, Robert Williams, declined to comment on the case because it still is pending before the court. The city's attorney, Jim Moriarty, said he was surprised by the scope of the opinion.

"The real issue is whether the city has authority to ticket people using illegal signs," Moriarty said. "To enter an injunction against the city enforcing the sign code seems to be unnecessarily broad."

The ordinance has been successfully defended for years under the argument that the city was protecting aesthetics and property values while ensuring traffic safety, the city's lawyers said.

But the court agreed to stop any citations pending a full hearing on the merits of RTM's arguments, deciding that the potential damage to the company and its advertisers was more important than Houston's need to enforce the ordinance.

"The threatened injury to plaintiff and to the advertisers outweighs any damage the injunction could cause the city," Harmon wrote. "Plaintiffs and others will be denied their First Amendment freedoms if the ordinance is enforced, while the city has alternative, constitutional ways of regulating signs in a content-neutral manner."

The judge set the case for trial next spring. The city could amend its ordinance to comply with her concerns before then.